More We Fear

The more bare a life the more we fear change.

A Burnt Out Case
Graham Greene
1960

Every Side Against the Middle

        Politeness and bonhomie are strictly provisional and everybody knows it,which is what gives this film it's terrible sadness. In the miserable economy of power in Boston's rumpled grey underworld, Eddie and his 'friends' are all expendable, and the ones left standing play every side against the middle, their white-knuckle terror carefully concealed under several layers of nonchalance and resignation.

Kent Jones
on Friends of Eddie Coyle - 1973
Criterion 

Never Quite Defeated

       Marlowe's type shouldn't get married. Because he is a lonely man, a poor man, a dangerous man and yet a sympathetic man, and somehow none of this goes with marriage. I think he will always have a fairly shabby office, a lonely house, a number of affairs, but no permanent connection ......... I see him always in a lonely street, in lonely rooms, puzzled but never quite defeated.

Raymond Chandler
Letter to a friend - 21st Feb 1959
(Chandler Died 26th March 1959)

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James Dietz

Coming Off Shift #10

Detour

Duel

Ashes and Diamonds

The Onion Field

The Hustler

Kalifornia

Last Picture Show

Last Stop in Yuma County

Shack Out on 101

Terminal

Double Indemnity

U Turn

Fallen Angel

The Vanishing (1993)

Body Heat

More Eric Schwab

Know His Habits

 

Chinatown
Roman Polanski
1974

Seem to Crave

                   
Since i looked in your direction
         Your tenderness is all i seem to crave
    But when i look for your affection
                You smile, my dear, and tell me to behave

Don't Make a Beggar of Me
(Sherman)

Frank Sinatra

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Romy Schneider
Hans Jurgen Syberberg

Shadows of the Jukebox #12

Out of the Fog

Blood Simple

Detour

Anatomy of a Murder

Mystic River

Touch of Evil

Desire and Hell at the Sunset Motel

Pushover

Sopranos

Asphalt Jungle

Low Down

Wild One

But a Reality

                                Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.

Soren Kierkegaard

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unknown

The Urban Labyrinth

 

         At the heart of  Night and the City is a master trope ; the urban labyrinth. Cities in film noir are not simply dangerous or bristling with iconographic menace - they are visualized as death traps, spaces from which there can be no escape. The common pattern finds summary expression in Dassin's film. Nearly every setting is crammed with architectural grids, frames, cul-de-sacs, narrow stairways, perspectives that choke off the mobility and freedom of human subjects.

In the Labyrinth
Paul Arthur
2015
Criterion.com

              https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/355-night-and-the-city-in-the-labyrinth?     srsltid=AfmBOoqzpUuVLRwYNKaXDWKugI5e0APPgv_AYGCFc-x5Nj882wYCQ1A7

All Rigged

   Maybe it's just the whole damn world is like central casting. They got it all rigged before you ever show up.

They Shoot Horses Don't They
Sydney Pollack
1969

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They Shoot Horses Don't They
Horace McCoy - 1935

Downpour of Shadows #30

Dead Reckoning

Carny

End of the Affair (1955)

Fight Club

Fallen Angel

Last Wave

Flamingo Road

Munich

The Housemaid (1960)

Nightmare Alley

Ministry of Fear

Three Days of the Condor

Une Si Jolie Petite Plage

Last Seduction

Odds Against Tomorrow

The Square (2008)

Shoot the Piano Player